Still Searching…

From 2012 to 2023, the discursive blog format of Fotomuseum Winterthur subjected all aspects of photography and its role in visual culture to interdisciplinary scrutiny. The approximately 50 bloggers that contributed to Still Searching… discussed photographic media and forms within their complex technological, capitalist and ideological networks and negotiated some of the most pressing and relevant questions surrounding photography.

Blog series: Photographic Realism, an Attempt

Bernd Stiegler | 15.01. – 29.02.2012
Photographic Realism, an Attempt

In his blog series Photographic Realism, an Attempt, Bernd Stiegler will introduce six different aspects of photographic realism over the course of his six-week blogging period. The intention is to explore options beyond familiar theoretical trajectories, such as the indexical nature of photography or photography as social documentary. At first glance, these will perhaps seem quite removed from the fundamental question of realism. Each concept is one perspective among many and is definitely intended as a more or less provocative thesis. At second glance, each has the potential — this is the central hypothesis — to open up a wide field of theoretical questions and related topics. Each is an invitation to discuss.

Reflection

Sunday, 22.01.2012
<div>A second approach for considering photographic realism is to define photography as a “reflective medium.” In a theoretical context, this term (“Reflexionsmedium”) featured prominently in Walter Benjamin’s dissertation <em>Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik</em> (The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism). Benjamin writes, “Reflection constitutes the absolute and constitutes it as a medium” (“Die Reflexion konstituiert das Absolute und sie konstituiert es als ein Medium”). <br><br></div>